Southern Cross Tas switching on HD

Southern Cross Tasmania has announced it will broadcast in HD from March 23rd.

Shows including My Kitchen Rules, AFL and Home and Away will be available in high definition on Channel 60 in MPEG4.

7Mate which is currently on Channel 60 will move to channel 63. Other channels will remain unchanged.

Rick Lenarcic, Head of Regional Media, SCA said: “From the first bounce of the 2017 AFL Season on the 23rd, Tasmanian AFL fans will be able to enjoy the games in the high quality of our High Definition broadcast.”

Some viewers may need to rescan their sets to find the new channels.

But there is no word on 7flix being added to the service.

After the introduction of the high definition channel the channel numbering will be:

On the Sunshine Coast Seven’s primary channel is still standard definition because Seven prefers to keep the redneck 7mate channel in HD for the AFL. Has it ever been explained why both channels shouldn’t be HD? Too expensive? Laws against it? And what’s happened to the negotiations to get 7flix on Foxtel satellite? Because many people watch FTA through their Foxtel box for convenience, it must be costing Seven heaps of eyes for 7flix.

FTA channels have a certain total bandwidth allocated by the government, in which they have to fit as many channels as they each determine. Foxtel operates by satellite and can use as many transponders (as much bandwidth) as they care to pay for.

That’s really terrific news for Southern Cross’s Tasmanian viewers but it’s cold comfort for those of us in many regional areas who watch Prime7 to access Seven programs. It’s taking an interminably long time for Prime7 to introduce a HD channel, unlike the other regional commercial operators and ABC and SBS who have all added an HD option. AFL fans in particular were hoping against hope that Prime7 would introduce a HD channel before the 2017 season kicked off to allow them to see crystal clear pictures of their favourite sport. Likewise, Prime7 still hasn’t added 7flix to its suite of Seven channels, more than 12 months after the multichannel launched in the capital cities. It does cost time and money to make these additions, but Prime7 compared with Australia’s other regional broadcasters, is really dragging its feet on adding HD. Perhaps Prime7 – the ‘official’ AFL channel…